Disgusting, but so funny

"Waiting..." is about youth in limbo. It's about that feeling you get when you're twenty-something, a couple years past (or shy of) a college degree and you have no idea what to do with your life. It's about the feeling as if you have no point. No direction.\nI'm not sure the director was pushing for the same listlessness when he made the movie, but that's how it turned out. And that's perfectly fine. Waiting tables isn't about hopes and dreams and moral climaxes; it's about the here and now. And consequentially, a movie about waiting tables can succeed without deeper meaning or a sense of purpose. \nThe film (or, more descriptively, collection of one-liners) was written and directed by a Rob McKittrick -- who apparently has never written or directed anything before. This is one hell of a start. While the film doesn't really go anywhere, much like its characters, it's quite funny -- and you'll never want to eat at a "neighborhood bar and grill" again.\nThe barebones plot follows a team of overworked social and sexual deviants through a shift in a suburban strip mall hell called Shenanigans, which is the culmination of every Chili's or TGI Fridays you've ever been to. Waiters Monty (Ryan Reynolds pulling off Van Wilder successfully again) and Dean (Justin Long) treat their work as an inevitability more than an opportunity. What gets them (and us) through their shift is an incredibly sick sense of humor. Which, of course, leads us to "the Game."\n"The Game" was brought to Shenanigans during a time of low staff morale by short order cook Raddimus (Luis Guzmán) and is pretty straightforward: find a creative way to flash your genitals at your coworker. Based on the uniqueness of the flashing, you get to kick him in the ass up to three times, then call him gay. The women on the staff refer to this as "an exercise in homophobic futility." I refer to it as "funny." I'm shallow. \nBeyond this running joke that peppers the film with dick jokes, the cast is rounded out with other colorful miscreants: Dane Cook takes a turn as knife-wielding kitchen staff, Andy Milonakis appears as a perpetually stoned bus boy, Chi McBride as a dishwasher and shrink for his coworkers and Patrick Benedict as a guy who just really, really can't seem to urinate in a public bathroom. You wouldn't think that last subplot would eat up fifteen minutes of the movie successfully, but McKittrick wrote a very funny script.\n"Waiting…" will not appeal to everyone. It's very crude, doesn't have much of a point and appeals to the lowest common denominator. Fortunately, people tend to go for that kind of thing. Go check it out; it'll definitely make you wonder what's going on in the kitchen.